Maria Gulovich Liu - WWII hero - dies

Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times

Published 4:00 am, Friday, October 2, 2009

Maria Gulovich Liu, who as a young schoolteacher in Slovakia during World War II joined the underground resistance as a courier and later helped a small group of American and British intelligence agents evade the German army as they fled through the frigid mountains to safety, has died. She was 87.

Ms. Liu, who received a Bronze Star for her "heroic and meritorious" service to the Office of Strategic Services, died of colon cancer at her home in the town of Port Hueneme (Ventura County), said Jim Downs, a family friend.

"I interviewed men who were with her, and they were flabbergasted by how brave she was," said Downs, who first met Ms. Liu when he interviewed her for his 2002 book "World War II: OSS Tragedy in Slovakia."

Ms. Liu was born Maria Gulovich on Oct. 19, 1921, in the village of Jarabina, near the Polish border.

She was attending the Greek Catholic Institute for Teachers in Presov when her homeland came under German dominance in 1939. The next year, she became a teacher, first in Jarabina and later in the farm community of Hrinova.

But her life began to change dramatically in early 1944.

A Jewish family friend, who operated a lumber mill and was considered useful to the Germans, had been hiding his sister and her young son. When he came under suspicion, he asked Ms. Liu to take in the woman and child. She reluctantly agreed: If caught and arrested, Ms. Liu probably faced imprisonment or worse.

A few weeks later, according to Downs' account, a Slovak Army captain turned up at the school and confronted Ms. Liu with her "crime."

But the captain was secretly part of a rebel group conspiring against the Slovak fascist government and gave her a choice: If she would join the underground espionage operation against the Germans, he would find another hiding place for the woman and her son, and he would see that no charges were made against Ms. Liu.

"She didn't want to be a courier; it was very dangerous," said Downs. "But once she did, she went at it 100 percent."

Ms. Liu was fluent in five languages, and after a couple of months as a courier, she was assigned to work with a Russian military intelligence group translating messages from Slovak into Russian.

While working for the Russians in the rebel headquarters after the Slovak National Uprising broke out on Aug. 29, 1944, she met American OSS personnel, who were there to assist in the uprising and also rescue downed American airmen.

The Americans asked her to join them as an interpreter and guide, and "she eagerly accepted."

The OSS group, he said, "had to find food and a way out, so they had to have someone who could talk to the villagers to get intelligence and also buy food."

On Dec. 26, most of the Americans were captured in a hunter's hut during a surprise raid by the German intelligence unit.

Ms. Liu, however, was in another area and avoided capture.

From then on, Downs said, it took Ms. Liu and the four agents who were with her - two Americans and two British - nine weeks to get to the Russian lines in Romania.

She is survived by her husband, Hans P. Liu; her son and daughter from a previous marriage, Edmund Peck and Lynn S. Peck; her sisters, Ana Gulovich, Tanya Kalenska and Eva Lamacova; and a granddaughter.